Nigeria offers best pay for oil expat

London, March 19, 2012

A typical oil and gas executive in Nigeria earns nearly half a million dollars a year, chalking up the biggest premium for working abroad over salary levels in Britain, research released on Monday showed.

A typical senior oil and gas employee in Nigeria will receive a supplementary country premium worth 45 percent of base pay, taking the total salary to $454,400 a year, a study by the Curzon Partnership recruitment consultants showed.

This trumps packages for executives working in Libya or Iraq, who could expect a total salary of around $354,900, the research found.

Oil and gas workers from developed nations working in Nigeria are paid well because of the number of projects that need international staff, local skills shortages and big cultural differences, the firm said.

"Whilst Lagos is an exciting and well established place to work for expats, oil and gas companies recognise that the incentives have to be high, because life as an expat in Nigeria is so different from countries with broader industries and higher standards of living," Helen Di Mauro, a partner at the Curzon Partnership, said.

Oil industry executives can expect a premium of 40 percent in Indonesia, 35 percent in Ghana and 30 percent in Libya, Kurdistan or Egypt, the research found. -Reuters